Celebrating Dad's 60th birthday with a 60 mile hike! Day 2 New Santa Fe Trail

Time for Day 2 of our 60 mile adventure. Yesterday, the four of us cranked out 20.1 miles over some pretty hilly terrain. Today we're taking it a little easier, mostly going over some flatland. We already know how many miles we're going to be hiking tomorrow, so today we were able to get a relatively late start at 7:30am.

Today's hike on the New Santa Fe Trail will take us along the front range of the mountains.

Off we go!

This path is used by a lot of runners and bikers. We encountered quite a few on our trip today.

A portion of this trail goes through the Air Force Academy grounds.

And despite the busyness of the trail, we still happened to see some wildlife.

Why is it the Santa Fe trail? Well every 20 minutes or so, a train on the Santa Fe line goes by.

By 10am, we hit the halfway point. Jon is just messing around. The hike today hasn't been that bad. Especially compared to yesterday. We broke into our snacks and started to head back.

We're getting close to the car!

Across the bridge and we're done!

Success! So how did we do on this easy day?

Just over 14 miles! Over a half marathon! With 20.1 miles yesterday and 14 miles today, that leave us 25.9 miles short of our goal. Tomorrow is going to be fun!

Relatively flat today. We'll make up for that tomorrow for sure.

Our timing couldn't have been much better. Not long after arriving at the car, the clouds that had been rolling in broke open and the bottom dropped out. We got off the trail just in time!

After all those miles, we were famished. Luckily we're pretty close to my favorite Korean Restaurant ever, so for a very late lunch, the four of us enjoyed wontons and bulgolgi at the San Chang House.

Tomorrow we conquer the Peak!